WCSCD 2023/2024 Educational Program Participants
Anna Ilchenko (b. 1987, Sri Lanka) is a curator based in Belgrade. She holds MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London and MA in Art History from the Russian State University for the Humanities. Her curatorial practice is inextricably linked to visual culture studies, and implements interdisciplinary and transhistorical approaches. Over the years her line of work has been related to institutional critique, politics of memory and amnesia, notions of public space, and questions around image production and distribution. Her current interests also include the exploration of a large spectrum of performativity, body and gender issues in the age of Big Tech and queer practice. Recent residency projects and exhibitions include: In their own words: The Next Generation Women Artists Residency(2021–2022); General Rehearsal. A show in three acts from the collections of V-A-C, MMOMA and KADIST (Moscow, 2018); Vladislav Shapovalov. Image Diplomacy (Moscow, 2017); Space Force Construction (Venice, 2017); Process. Case Studies at the Museum.
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(Moscow, 2016–2017). Anna has lectured on methodologies of art history and artistic practices in museums and contributed articles to several art journals and online platforms. In 2019 she became a research fellow at Delfina Foundation where she further studied various residency programmes and cultural initiatives in London. Based on this research in 2021 she launched a residency programme for artists working at the intersection of theatre, music, dance and video.
Asida Butba is co-founder of and a curator at SKLAD, the first contemporary art space in Abkhazia. SKLAD is a self-organized initiative, working at the conjunction of art, education and international cooperation with the aim of providing the best structure to support the capital Sukhum/i’s creative minds in the context of scarce resources and international isolation. Since it’s opening in late 2015 it has been home to 30 local and international art exhibitions and more than 250 public events such as film screenings, artist talks, lectures and workshops. These include In the shade of Big Trees (2022), Back to the Archives (2018), Deletion Marks (2017) and Games in the Open Air (2016). SKLAD has hosted 25 artists from across the globe and from 2016 has worked in partnership with the Swiss Artas Foundation. In the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, SKLAD now has to deal with a much harsher isolation and look for new ways to keep up the exchange.
Laura Rositani is an art writer and independent curator from Vicenza, Italy.
After a degree in foreign languages and literature, she attended a master in economics and management of art and cultural events at Cà Foscari University in Venice. She collaborated with several galleries, museums and foundations in Paris, Amsterdam, Bologna, Milan and Venice.
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After her experience at Fondazione Bonotto, she specialized in Fluxus and Experimental Poetry. She is co-founder of the art platform Contemporary Caring and art writer for the independent magazine Mulieris.
Mirjana Savic is an artist working within the spaces of sculptural and installation practice.
Attending to materials and material determination.
Shifting, transforming, sliding. Contained and coming undone.
Un-restricting materials and re-contextualising through transformative processes.
Materials existing as themselves.
Bringing attention to, observing; transformations. Revealing the materiality of materials.
Focusing on potentials, on marks, columns, walls, weight, on dust, cracks, expansion,
tension, space, bodies moving.
Actions and reactions.
Actions that ask questions. Stacking, folding, compressing. Interrogating the space.
Waiting for what will happen. Transformations, whether they are physically visible or not.
What happens when you construct an action (visible or invisible) to be open to the effects of chance? Actions: waiting to happen, in motion, on the verge but never arrive,
eventual.
Limits that reveal uncertainty, chance. Following a path of resistance.
Mirjana has completed her undergraduate degree in Fine Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Her Honours research project at RMIT, 2022, considered a deep material investigation,focusing on actions that question and reveal potentials within structured spaces. I live and create on the unceded sovereign land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
Andrey Parshikov (b. 1985, Podolsk, Moscow region) is a curator and art-critic, curator in V-A-C foundation, Moscow. He has made numerous (around 30) exhibitions in Russia, US and Europe, including General Rehearsal (in collaboration with curatorial group of V-A-C, KADIST and MMOMA, Moscow, 2018), A Rose Has Teeth in a Mouth of a Beast (APALAZZO Gallery, Brescia, 2015), Underneath the Street, the Beach (Fondazione Sandretto Re-Rebaudengo, Turin, 2015), We Have Nothing that is Ours Except Time (Central Park, Vienna), I Remember It Differently from You (MUZEON park of Arts, Moscow, 2013), Great Repression (White Box gallery, New York, and SB gallery, Paris, 2008), Ultra-New Materiality (MMOMA, Moscow, 2009). He has been a teacher in British Higher School of Art and Design, Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow School of Gender Studies, Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Russian State University for the Humanities. His texts were published in Springerin magazine, Manifesta Journal, Moscow Art Magazine, Art Chronicles magazine, Openspace.ru web-site. He made residencies in Fondazione Sandretto Re-Rebaudengo in Turin. He also made a class of Maria Lind and Juan A. Gaitan in Salzburg Academy.
Сurator’s career of Andrey Parshikov began from the keen interest to the systems of creative industries and relations within them (Ultra-New Materiality project). Now, for a few years already, he has been involved in the issues of non-materialistic knowledge and options of its re-appropriation at right-hand discourse. This was the topic of the large exhibition in an ancient castle in Italy — A Rose Has Teeth in a Mouth of a Beast. Within investigation of everything magic and weird in art he also distinguishes the queer-theory issue as the last bulwark of the system as it is (capitalist, androcentric, religious) and post-internet practices which the curator directly relates to sealed knowledge, for ‘telepathy is just the well-developed peer-to-peer technology.